


solace, among other things

by ditty (Triple_A)



Series: The Kids Are Alright [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Original Work
Genre: Character Study, Coming of Age, Fluff and Angst, LGBTQ Themes, Multi, Teenagers, Tina Chen & Gavin Reed Friendship, Trans Character, Trans Gavin Reed, Trans Tina Chen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 09:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28469370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triple_A/pseuds/ditty
Summary: They were kids, once.--An in-process character study about two very unlikely friends - from adolescence, to adulthood.
Relationships: Tina Chen & Gavin Reed
Series: The Kids Are Alright [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2085351
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	solace, among other things

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with this idea last year and cranked this out earlier this year. I thought I'd put this up now to herald 2021 with some rockin' vibes
> 
> None of this has any canon basis whatsoever I just thought it'd be neat. Anyways they're both trans because I said so

The first time they see each other, it’s in the parking lot of the grocery store, and each are holding onto their respective mother’s hands and staring.

The boy looks to the girl with a confused furrow in his brow. The girl glares back with a frown.  _ What are  _ you  _ looking at,  _ she seems to say. The boy doesn’t turn away, still a little wide-eyed and curious.

“Come on, dear.” The mothers say in different tones.

And the children look away as they are lifted into their car seats and buckled in, the memory of the other quickly disappearing, as they usually do in the minds of four-year-olds.

\--

The second time is more deliberate. The second time is elementary school, and there is a very heated game of tag happening in the yard.

It’s the equivalent of a war for these kids. Friendships are forgotten. New allegiances are forged - “I won’t tag you if you won’t tag me!” - and there is so much raucous, joyous screaming. The teachers watch on from a respective distance, where they don’t have to fear eardrum damage and still ensure that none of the students are hurt.

The boy is IT. And he spins, eyes lighting on every target. Trying to find someone he knows he can outrun on his skinny legs, when his eyes land on a familiar face.

The girl is turning away when she realizes she’s being stared at, and glares back with the same force she had, nearly five years ago. Daring him to tag her. But she pauses for an instant. She remembers too.

“You!” The boy says, in a moment of confused recognition, and the word is swallowed by a thousand trampling feet and varying shouts.

He reaches out, and the girl trips backwards to avoid his outstretched fingers. And sprawls backwards on the ground, elbows collapsing against asphalt.

Later, they’re sitting outside the offices. The girl waits to go to the nurse, recently dried tears on her face and paper towels pressed against her bleeding elbow. The boy waits to go to the principal’s, staring down at the tiles between his feet and wondering if his parents yell at him if he explains that it wasn’t his fault.

“Why’d you yell at me?” The girl asks, irritation clear despite her sniffles.

The boy shrugs. “I’unno.” He mumbles. He had only been to the principal’s a week earlier, for a loose tooth that needed a special case to be kept in. His tongue traces the empty spot in his mouth with a nervous focus.

“Hmph.” She adjusts the press of the paper against her battle-wound. The bleeding is almost gone, but it still stings. “Why’d you trip me then?”

“I didn’t mean to! You tripped yourself.” He protests with the conviction of a desperate, innocent man about to be sentenced.

“Only because you were going to push me.”

“I wasn’t!”

“You were!”

“I don’t even know your name!” The boy blurts, because by his logic, how could they be enemies if he didn’t even know her name?

She opens her mouth, but at that moment the nurse’s door creaks open and the elderly matron is ushering her inside. And at the same time, the principal’s door opens to usher him to certain doom.

He goes with his head hung low. The girl turns, and calls out.

“My name is -”

\--

They’re in third grade. 

It’s the last day of school.

The school has decided the best way to see off the current class of sixth graders was for a big, schoolwide outdoors picnic, with all parents invited. Children scream and play like it’s the last day on earth, and it may very well be. It’s the last day before summer vacation, and for many it’s the last time they’ll see each other for three, long, months.

The girl sits beneath a tree on a beach towel, blinking stray out of her eyes. Sweat drips down her face. She needs to squint to see the little pixel characters on the screen of her Gameboy, a toy that she wouldn’t have been allowed to bring to school otherwise, if not for it being the last day. It’s a relic, really. A thing suited more to the era of older siblings and only passed down for favor of receiving newer, flashier handheld consoles.

Not that it matters. No one’s paying attention, and her parents aren’t even here to tell her off. Too busy with work to show up. She’s perfectly happy playing a faded cartridge of Pokemon Red by herself.

“Hey.”

She looks up.

The boy is there, and he looks just as sweaty and uncomfortable as her. Dark hair sticking to his forehead and pale cheeks flushed. He’s holding a Gameboy too, the thing scuffed up and beaten with the age of being well-loved.

“What are you playing?” He asks.

She debates telling him. He may be here to tease her; but why would he be holding a Gameboy himself?

“Pokemon Red,” She says with an air of superiority, daring him to make fun of her choice. “I bought it myself. With my own money.”

“Oh. Cool.” The boy shuffles in the grass. Bees float among the clover beneath his sneakers. “I have that one too.”

“Hmph. What’s your team like?”

“Pretty good,” He says, and he says so like he’s sure of it. He tilts his face up, suddenly proud. “I have a level 60 Pidgeot. And a level 60 Persian.”

“Big deal.  _ I  _ have a Flareon, Vaporeon,  _ and  _ a Jolteon.”

“Are they level 60?”

“See for yourself.” She scootches over on the towel, and after a moment of hesitation (and a quick glance around to make sure they weren’t being watched; he didn’t want to suddenly get accused of having cooties on the  _ last  _ day of school) he sits next to her, relieved to be in the shade.

“Where’d you get your gameboy? I got mine for Christmas,” says one.

“My cousin gave it to me for my birthday. It was her’s, and she fixed it for me ‘cuz the screen was cracked.” Replies the other.

“I’m saving up to get the new Nintendo 3DS. So I can get Pokemon Black and White.”

“Oh, same. Except I wanna get Legend of Zelda too.”

“I’ve never played it.”

“Oh, you totally should. I have  _ Twilight Princess _ for the Wii at home, it’s super fun-”

“You have a Wii?”

“Yeah! My dad said I could have it if I promised to be on good behavior, so I got A’s for all of second grade and he got it…”

And so on.

\--

Summer passes like every other summer. Hot, stagnant days and sticky lemonade and the parents trying to get the kids out of the house for a spell.

As the two kids found out, they live on the same street. Opposite ends of the same neighborhood. One lives in one of the nicer, newer two-story houses with the big neat yard and uncracked windows. The other lives in a one-story building on the edge of the woods, with the yard littered with enough things to be mistaken for a refuse dump.

But it doesn’t matter. Such things rarely matter to kids. Especially kids with things to do.

Woods or suburban yard, both are conquerable by conjoined efforts.

\--

Middle school brings new revelations. As it does for most kids.

It’s strange. Social hierarchies suddenly form around seemingly banal things. The popular cults are overtaken by those with the new XBox games and those with the coolest phones. Simple graphic t-shirts and traded out for sport brand logos and colorful patterned tops.

And this is where Gavin meets Tina,  _ really meets  _ Tina, for the first time. 

(Except - not quite.)

(“So...you’re a girl?” “Yeah, I think so. And you’re a boy?” “Mhm.” “Huh.” “What should I call you?” “I don’t know. I didn’t think this far ahead.” “Yeah, me neither.”)

(They decide to figure it out later.)

They’re outcasts. They’re not the only outcasts, of course, but they’ve relegated themselves to a table on the outskirts of the cafeteria and eschew the others. Trendy clothes are shunned for shapeless jackets and shirts. The popular trends are spoken of with disdain. They are, without a doubt, nerds.

Gavin points this out one day, when they’re sitting in the camp they’ve made in the trees behind Gavin’s house and Tina just shrugs. “So?”

“So nothing. Just saying, that’s basically what we are.” He replies. One hand keeps toying with the frayed edge of his hair, cropped messily short in a fit of rebellion. He likes it. Tina wishes she could’ve seen the look on his mother’s face when she saw.

“Who cares?” She shrugs back. Her hair is growing longer. Almost shaggy. Her own mom berates her for it every single day. She waits for the day she can put it into a ponytail. A hairband sits on her wrist for exactly this purpose, to test if it’s long enough any chance she’s alone in front of a mirror.

“Enough people. Eustace Biggs thinks we’re dating and told a bunch of his friends.”

“Ugh,  _ Eustace. _ ” 

“Right?”

They bash Eustace for a few minutes, for the usual ridiculous reasons. His name, for one. His irritatingly nosy personality, for another. How if given the chance, and without the threat of his lawyer father, they would absolutely deck him, despite the fact that he’s a year older and on the football team.

“Seriously though.” Gavin says, when the giggles die off after watching Tina mime punching a comically proportioned caricature of Eustace. “What are we? Are we just friends? Or…”

“Oh.” Tina had never thought about it before. “Oh, uh.” She thinks. “Hm.”

“BecauseIdon’tmindifweare,” Gavin says quickly. “If we are just, uh, friends. I like being just friends.”

“Oh. Oh! Okay cool.” Tina says, just as fast. “Because-not that I wouldn’t, you know, date you if I had to. But I don’t think I...I’m pretty sure I’m gay.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, y’know. Rainbows ‘nd stuff.”

“Oh.”

They’re quiet for a moment, lying on the grass clearing and staring at the canopy of leaves above. Sunlight filters through, painting the grass gold and green.

Gavin breaks the silence. “So, that means that you like…”

“It means I like girls.”

“Right. Right. Cool. That’s cool.” He picks at his hands. The palms are calloused from climbing trees before Tina got the bright idea to make a rope ladder for their unfinished treehouse. “I have a lesbian aunt. She’s cool.”

“I know. You talked about her before.”

“I have?”

“Yeah. Your dad doesn’t like her.”

“Oh yeah.” It was probably common knowledge, he thinks. His dad had practically chased his aunt out of the house with a volley of screams upon finding out. He was sure the entire neighborhood had heard it. “I like guys. I mean, not just guys. I’m pretty sure I like both.”

“I think that’s called being bi.”

“Huh. Neat.”

“Yeah.”

They’re still a moment longer. A cicada chirps somewhere - soon, summer will come again. And with summer comes a new opportunity to finish their long-languishing treehouse in the woods and throw water balloons at Eustace’s gang of seedy, rich-kid friends and get water ice from the little parlor down the road. But for now they still had math homework to finish and only each other to confide in.

“I should get home.”   


“Okay. Do you wanna come over for dinner?”

“Sure. Let me tell my mom first.”

“Okay. See you, then.”

“Yeah, see you.”

\--

“I think I know what I want to be called now.”

He hardly hears her at first, over the repetitive thumps of hammer striking nail. “What’d you say?”

“Jeez, stop hammering for a moment. I said I figured out what I want my name to be.” His grip on the handle slips, and a stubborn sliver of wood pierces his thumb. But he hardly notices. 

“Wait, really? What is it?”

She sets down her own mallet and the crooked nail she had been trying vainly to straighten. “Do you promise not to laugh?”

“Promise.”

“Promise on what?”

“Seriously?”

“Come on, dude.”

“Alright, alright, fine.” He extends his right hand, pinkie outstretched.

She takes it, satisfied. “Cool.”

“Okay, so what’s your name. Come on. I wanna know.”

“I think I want to be called...Tina.”

The name hangs in the air for a moment, like with the same sanctity of a cuss being uttered aloud for the first time. Tina holds her breath.

“Tina?” He says slowly, setting the hammer down and leaning against the rail of the treehouse. The platform was done. They just needed a roof and some walls. “That’s cool. Why?”

“I dunno. I feel like it fits. And it’s either ‘Tina’ or ‘Carrie’.” She sets down the rusty nail she had been trying to straighten. It was a lost case, anyways. They may as well try and repurpose it as a fishhook. “I dunno. I just like the name.”

“Do you want me to call you by that?”

“Yeah. But only when our parents aren’t around. And not in school.”

“Well no, duh.” He rolls his eyes. And then softens. “It’s a good name. I like it.”

“You think so?”

“Hell yeah. Also, could you pass me a band-aid? Tina?”

She grins. “Yeah, okay. And why?”

“I got a splinter before you started talking and I’m bleeding right now.”

“Jeez.”

\--

Tina is Tina for approximately three months before she tries Carrie. And then she’s Carrie for only three weeks before she tries Eliza. Eliza only lasts a month before it’s Tony, then Thalia, then (jokingly, she insists) Trudy, before settling on Tina again.

And she sticks with it.

\--

“Hey, Tina?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I don’t want to be called Evan anymore.”

“Oh.” He can hear her shifting, probably sitting up in bed. “Why? I mean, you don’t to say why, never mind-”

“No, it’s okay.” He scoots himself closer to the window, trying to get better reception through the walkie. The walkie’s were spur-of-the-moment purchases as kids that became essential, because his phone plan didn’t allow for any calls that weren’t emergency, and still had good enough reception late at night that he can talk to Tina, even now. “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I know it was always easier, because of - you know, my...birth name -  _ ‘Evangelyne’  _ \- but I don’t know. Evan just doesn’t...fit, anymore, I guess.”

“Like...an old shoe?” The comment would’ve been derisive if it came from anyone else other than Tina. She doesn’t sound sleepy anymore. She’s awake.

“Yeah. Yeah, kinda. Or a jacket I really used to like that doesn’t fit anymore.”

“That’s not that different from my shoe metaphor.”

“I’m having a moment, Tina.”

“Right, right. Sorry.” A pause of static. “So what do you want to call yourself now?”

“Um..” It’s late. It’s past midnight, but white light still pours through the windows onto the carpet. The moon is fat and round and a headlight in the dark sky. “I think…’Gavin.’”

“Gavin?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” There’s the low tap of nails against the walkie. Tina’s thinking tic. “Gavin Reed.”

“Yep. That’s me.”

“You know. Your first initial and last name pells ‘greed’. That’s cool.”

“Oh you’re right. Hell yeah.”

“Hell yeaaah.”

“ _ Heeelll yeeeeaaaaah _ .”

“We should go the hell to sleep, dude.”

“Alright, alright. Good night, Tina.”

“Night, Gavin.”

\--

High school is a problem.

Tina is being enrolled in a prestigious academy. Complete with sweater-vest uniforms and everything. Complete with separate bussing and scholarships and everything. And yet not complete, because Gavin’s not going to be there.

Because Gavin’s going to the public high school.

“It’s fine,” She tells him, later, at the tree house. Billy Joel plays on the staticking second-hand radio. Summer is fading to fall, and the heavy foreboding presence of school hangs above them. “We can still hang out outside of school. And we have our walkies and each other’s numbers.”

“Hm.” Gavin sits across from her. A Gameboy sits in his hands where he idly fiddles with it. She can’t tell if it’s his or hers.

“And our buses show up at the same time. We can hang out for a bit then.”

“Mhm.”

“And...Gav, come on. Say  _ something. _ ”

“What do you want me to say?”

She sighs. She’s irritated, at the noncommittal grunts and the indifferent shrugs and his immediate, sudden shutdowns whenever she tries to talk about high school and what it brought. “I’m  _ trying  _ to find, like, the silver lining of all this. You could at least  _ talk  _ to me.”

“I dunno, Tina. The silver lining for you is that you get to go to a rich kid’s school and make new friends with cool people, and I’m still stuck here.” He bites back. He stops messing with the Gameboy. “And for me, the silver lining is that I get to hang out with the same jackasses we’ve been dealing with for the past ten years while you’re off being smart, or whatever.”

“You act like I wanted to go to this school. At least you won’t have to deal with Eustace anymore.” She means for it to come out like a joke. It doesn’t land quite right, and Gavin’s face sours all the more. “Whatever, fine. Be a bitch.”

He stands up. The game in his hand clatters to the floor. His fists are clenched. “So you’re already becoming a pretentious asshole, huh?”

“Excuse me?” She turns to him, trying to find the joke on his face, but it’s not there. “Gavin, what the fuck?!”

“Listen, I don’t think we should hang out anymore.” He kicks at the radio, and it shuts down with a warbling whine. He runs agitated fingers through his hair, and Tina distantly notices that it’s growing out fast. It covers his ears. “We’re going to different schools and shit. We’re bound to grow apart.”

“...What, so you’re treating this like a breakup?” It was absurd. She had to laugh.

“Yes.” She stops laughing.

“Gavin, this is-for fuck’s sake. You can’t just end a friendship because you think it’s  _ inevitable  _ it’s going to end _. _ That’s not how that shit works.”

“I’m not saying we end it on a bad note, or anything. I’m saying this so that we’re fucking prepared for the fact that we’re not going to talk as much anymore. Or at all.” 

“Oh, you have a really funny way of defining ‘bad note’.”

“Oh, shut up.” He snaps, and she glares. He could be a real asshole when he wanted to. She had seen proof of this firsthand before, but it stung differently when it was directed at her. “You and I both know it was going to happen eventually.”

“I don’t know, actually. And I don’t know what kind of shit you’re on, but that’s not how being friends with me works. Or friends with anyone.” She spits back. “You can’t just call it off because you  _ think _ it’s going to end. If you’re going to decide you’re not my friend anymore, you better have a good fucking reason.”

“So not wanting either of us to get hurt isn’t a reason?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?! Of course not! You don’t even know that for sure!”

“But it might!” He rounds on her, face pulled into something she can’t read. “You’re gonna meet people who are richer and cooler and better, so don’t tell me that you’re not going to replace me!”

This is the thing about Gavin, a flaw that she’s picked out before but never commented on. He takes his hurt and turns it into a weapon. He takes his insecurities and thinks, if I act on this first, then it won’t hurt me later, but he sometimes doesn’t know how to act. Like now.

If she were calmer, she might try to talk it out. But she can’t look at him. Fury colors her vision red. She storms past him, clambering down the rope ladder, jumping the last few rungs. Even more infuriatingly, Gavin only watches. He makes no move to stop her.

\--

He texts her, later that night. Asking for help. He wants to cut his hair again but he has no access to the shaver.

_ you dont have to if u don’t want to. i get it if you dont want to.  _ His text reads. The option to reject him, like he hadn’t just asked for help in the sentence before.

Ten minutes later, Tina is clambering through his bathroom window with her dad’s shaver in her backpack.

Another ten minutes, and Gavin is staring at his reflection in the mirror with tears on his face. Before he turns to fist hands in Tina’s jacket and apologize in a hushed, shaky breath.  _ I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. _

\--

The kids between Middleton and Easton High are clearly split.

The kids from one end of the neighborhood - the newer end, the  _ richer  _ end - stand clustered close, dressed in white dress shirts and blue sweater vests. Segregated from them are the kids from the opposite end of the neighborhood, dressed in the varying, fading colors of those who have to rely on the dingy laundromat in town for cleaning their clothes. They are separate. As distinct as oil and water.

Except for two.

Gavin stands next to Tina and can’t stop running his hand over the nape of his neck, feeling the short hairs there and the unfamiliar breeze. Tina stands next to Gavin pulling her hair back into a tiny ponytail, fluffed up like a paintbrush at the base of her skull. 

The bus pulls up for Easton High first. The uniformed students line up. Tina turns to Gavin, his brow is furrowed into something sad.

“I’ll see you, I guess.”

“Yeah. See you.”

\--

She wonders if Gavin was right.

She acclimates relatively easy into the new surroundings. She makes acquaintances, accomplices, some she might call ‘friends’ depending on the time of day. The teachers are stern but fair. The work is rigorous. Between school and clubs, she hardly has a free moment to breathe.

She sees Gavin every morning, and they stand separate from their respective schools next to each other, often in silence. She tries to text Gavin every night, and he tries to respond in kind. Usually, neither have the energy for a full conversation, and their correspondences dwindle to just a few interchanged memes or pictures. Sometimes, they don’t talk at all.

And then Gavin calls her.

Her phone buzzes on her desk as she sweats over integral problems, and for a moment she’s so startled she’s not sure what to do. Gavin never called. It was always texts, or else the walkie would startle to life.  _ My phone plan only lets me call in emergencies. _

“Hello?”

“ _ Tina, _ ” Gavin stutters back, and her heart drops. He sounds rough, like he’d been crying. “ _ Can you - the woods - can you come? _ ”

He’s not being coherent, but she understands it anyways. Her heartbeat sets in a sudden tattoo in her chest, too fast for the rest of her as she starts moving from her seat. “Yeah, I’m coming. Do you need anything? Are you okay?”

“ _ Don’t know. I don’t know. _ ” He sobs. She grabs a jacket and struggles to pull it on with the phone pinched between her shoulder and cheek. “ _ I’m bleeding a lot. It’s a lot. _ ”

“Okay, okay. Hold on.” She reaches under her bed for the first aid kit, gifted to her during a brief stint in scouts and relegated there to a lifetime of intermittent use. There was no hope of getting out of the house through the front door now, not when it was this late. She slides open the window.

(When she looks back on this moment, she thinks that she should’ve knotted one of her sheets into a rope, like they did in the movies, so she could’ve gotten back in through the window and avoided all the scolding for coming in through the front door. But that was hindsight. And something, something, 20-20.)

It’s much less like she climbs down the tree by her window and more like she crashes through it, landing clumsily on her back with a grunt. She’s not winded, thankfully, so she darts in the direction of Gavin’s house and the woods, the kit tucked securely beneath her arm. The phone clutched in the other hand.

All lights in his house are off. The extra car parked outside indicated that Gavin’s relatives were visiting, probably his cousin’s family. When she squints, she sees the telltale glimmer of light from the treehouse. A beacon. Or something.

And Gavin was inside.

It was easy to tell by the blood that trails across the boards.

It’s the first thing she sees when she’s climbed the rope ladder, and she nearly falls back down to earth. Gavin is crouched in the farthest corner of the house, trying to staunch the blood that covers his face with a sleeve of his sweatshirt, soaking the gray fabric through. His phone sits nearby, the screen cracked. His shoulders shake with repressed sobs.

“Gav?”

He responds blindly, turning towards her, and she feels something turn sickly at the sight. Blood pours freely down his face, from a large gash across his face. A diagonal slash across the bridge of his nose, that stretches onto his cheek.

“Gav, what happened?!” She brings the kit forward and begins to dig through. There was hardly anything in there that could constitute something as big and devastating as this. It was meant for scraped knees and belly-aches. “Who did this!”

He shakes his head frantically. Tears cut clean tracks in all that red. The sounds that come out of his mouth are too strangled to be constituted as words.

“Okay. Okay, okay.” She can’t let panic take over now. Her hands shake as she withdraws a comically small roll of gauze, and she grimaces. The help she offers won’t be enough, and she wishes they could do this inside, where they had a sink and maybe better supplies, but Gavin was in the tree house for a reason, even if she didn’t know what that reason was. “Okay. Let’s do this, then…”

He’s docile under her hands, letting her turn his face any which way to clean the wound. Any other time she had tried to patch him after his frequent fights, pressing frosted bags of peas to his black eyes and antiseptic to his scrapes, he had pushed her away. He had insisted he was fine, or that he could do it himself. That he didn’t need to be coddled, that she should go play nurse elsewhere. And now?

Something - or someone - had stolen the fight from him. 

Something bitter and vengeful twists in her chest.

The bleeding mostly slows, enough for her to apply a generous application of goo from a scrunched tube of antiseptic. Some part of her says that they should call 911. Gavin needed stitches, not the clumsy attempts of a high schooler with a dusty first aid kit. But Gavin tilts his head forward to let her wrap gauze around his face, and all she can think is how desperately protective, and how venomously furious, she feels.

When she’s done, the job looks alright. Layers of white wrapped around his face like a half-done mummy. The tears are gone, and his eyes are bloodshot. The only blood still on him is stained into his sweater, and she’d make him change out of it if she had anything to offer.

“...Gavin, who did this?” She tries again.

His mouth flattens to a thin line. He looks to be on the brink of tears, and when Tina takes his hand he clutches back like someone drowning.

“Gavin, please.”

“Don’ wanna talk about it.”

“You’re gonna have to, before I go back to Middleton and start beating up every jackass I see. Or was it Eustace? Do I need to beat up Eustace? He can’t get any uglier, so it’s not like they can try me in court.”

He snorts. It’s a weak little sound, but it gives Tina hope. It’s a sign of healing. “No, it wasn’t any other kid.”

“Oh?”

“It was my dad.”

“...Oh.”

His dad. A tall, scroungy man, hair always greasy and face always sallow and eyes always shrewd. Her few interactions with him always left her feeling distinctly uncomfortable afterwards. Like a mouse that had narrowly dodged a cat. His temper was infamous in the neighborhood, but he’d never  _ hit  _ anyone before. At least, she’d never heard of it.

“He didn’t mean to,” Gavin’s voice trembles. “He was angry. Work, and stuff, and he was yelling at mom. I pissed him off more, and he grabbed the closest thing - he wasn’t aiming for the face, he wasn’t aiming to cut me up.”

“Gavin - Gav, that’s still not okay.”

“I know, I know. Mom called my uncle to come over. To make sure Dad doesn’t do anything stupid. She said it’d be a good idea if I didn’t go inside for a little bit.”

“Gav, that’s  _ really  _ not okay.”

“I know.”

“You can’t stay there anymore.”

“I have to.” His hands close tight, squeezing almost painfully against Tina’s fingers. “My mom’s still with him.”

“Then neither of you can stay.”

“Where can we go, Tina?”

She doesn’t have an answer.

\--

Tina calls his aunt to take him to get treatment, and they wait on the curb for her car to show.

It’s cold out. Gavin can feel the chill settle through his shirt and into his bones. Tina is waiting next to him, head slumped against his shoulder. She must be exhausted. He feels awful for calling her out, this late at night.

“Hey, Tina…”

“If you’re gonna say sorry, don’t.” She grumbles back. Her eyes are closed.

“But I called you in the middle of the night, and-”

“Because of the big fuck-off cut across your fucking face. Shut up.” Cold-clumsy fingers find his and squeeze reproachfully. “You don’t have to apologize for getting hurt. It’s not your fault that happened.”

“But-”

“Listen. Remember that one time you said all that bullshit stuff about how we were gonna grow apart eventually?” He does, and he flinches inwardly at the memory of his abrasiveness. “Yeah. I hope you know that I was right. You’re stuck with me, and vice versa.”

“I don’t-”

“That means I’m not going to ditch you, dummy. A-and, even when you get beat up to shit, I’m not gonna say no to helping you. Even if you  _ think  _ it’s your fault, for whatever fu-ucking reason.” Her voice jerks, and for a moment he thinks it’s because her teeth are chattering, until he realizes something hot is soaking into his shoulder and she’s actually crying. “You’re not as easily replaceable as you think. S-So shut up. Okay?”

Something gets caught in his throat, and he repeats savagely to himself,  _ I’m not gonna cry anymore, I’m not gonna cry anymore, I’m not gonna cry...  _ “...Okay.”

“Okay. Cool.”

A light shines forward, and he squints. His aunt’s car pulls in. A shitty old Toyota, covered with goofy bumper stickers and dented in the hood. He’s never been more glad to see it.

“Need a ride, kiddo?” Aunt Eliza asks Tina, as Gavin sits himself in shotgun.

“No, ma’am. I should get home. My parents are gonna throw a fit.”

“You sure? I can talk to them if you want.”

“No, it’s okay. If I can just borrow a jacket, or something…” Her own was stained brown and matted in patches. “So I don’t give them a heart attack.”

A few minutes later, because Eliza had insisted that she at least drive Tina to her front door, Gavin watches his best friend as she walks across her lawn, the silhouette of her dad in the window. He hears the sharp words when the door opens. He sees her wave as she goes in, a crooked grin on her face. ‘Everything’s going to be alright,’ it says.

And then the door shuts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (queer eye antoni mac and cheese meme) The idea of a self-discovery journey and finding comfort in your own identity with a loved one by your side can be something so personal...
> 
> My new year's resolution is to love people unapologetically. I think that'd be very cool and sexy of me. And to finish a fic for once. Because that would also be very cool and sexy.
> 
> I wish all trans people a very pleasant new years :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I love you :)


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